Do you remember this post? Did you happen to notice that I never delivered the reveal? That's because it turns out paint hell was much worse than I was anticipating, and once again I have no one to blame other than myself.
You see, I thought I had chosen the perfect shade of red. Bright, clean, fire engine red. Only it was a chip from the Ralph Lauren line and I was too lazy to drive all the way to evil orange to buy it. Instead, I moseyed down the one mile to my local hardware store, (where I am known as the crazy color paint lady, in the friendliest of ways, of course), thinking I would most certainly be able to find a similar red in one of the lines of paint they carry. But I thought wrong. The only Benny Moore red that fit the bill was a pre-mixed, exterior formula that only came in semi-gloss. And they didn't have any anyway. But the nice paint guy offered to look up the formula for the Ralphie color I wanted and mix it, and I gave the go ahead which really, I should have known better than to do. Because you just really can't mess with reds. Because red paint is like some kind of dark art.
So I got home and put four freakin coats of the stuff on the wall and all seven of the oh-so-tedious-to-paint window openings and then spent the next two weeks trying to figure out why I hated it so much. At first I thought it was because I finished at night, and the light was different. And when it still sucked in the daylight, I thought maybe it was a seasonal light thing. And then it finally occurred to me to check the wall color against the chip, which is when I realized the two were COMPLETELY different colors. Um...hello? Can you say maroon? No wonder it was gack.

Anyway, the reveal is finally here. I ended up using a Valspar color called Starfire Red, and I love it. And for those of you keeping track, this is paint do-over number two this year, bearing in mind that in all of my extensive wall painting history, I have never, ever even once had to do a do-over on color. Figures, since all those jobs paled in comparison to the enormity of the task that is painting this house.



The irony here is that it ended up being a semi-gloss anyway because that was the only way to get the color, just like the BM would have been had I had the presence of mind to just delay gratification and let them order me some. I was a little freaked at the prospect of a red AND shiny wall, but now that it's up, I think it makes it better somehow.